From Kerry T - Italian wars light cavalry (120 points)

Morning, afternoon & evening all

A quick post I hope because if I'm quick enough I might get another entry finished!

One goal I set myself for this challenge was to try and add some cavalry to my Italian Wars project. So far I've only managed to knock off some Casting Room Jinettes. I have more Gendarmes, Knights and light cavalry waiting but got sidetracked

This entry again shows the versatility of plastic figures. These are from the Perry Miniatures Light Cavalry 1450- 1500 box

You'll notice they are wearing funny hats called mazzocchios apparently. I read (in the Perry box) that they were stuffed rolls of fabric generally placed over barbutes. This was apparently peculiar to Italy in the mid 15th century - the Italians I suppose are famous for funny hats (think no further than the Pope's hat and Bersaglieri helmets!). Maybe it was the original posh ye olde sweatband that served as inspiration for tennis players in the 70s and 80s!

Mine are plain but I think they may have been meant to have geometric patterns

I'm not sure that going to war with an oversized polo mint on your head would be conducive to good balance but ahh, I digress....

C'mon boys, first one through the church door gets to drink the communion wine

In Summary

12 Mounted figures @ 10 points each = 120

No bonuses 

1 Squirrel

Many thanks and with a bit of luck another post might follow overnight

From Millsy: Very nice indeed Kerry and right up to your usual standard too mate. These are smashing and the extra flash of colour from those weird Italian helmet rolls really locates them in time and space. Such an odd, period specific thing those helmet rolls and proof the Italians didn't always have a monopoly on style! The flag is spectacular too and really finishes them off. Nice work!

From GeoffreyT: Clean up of loose ends (Gift Shop, Local History, 80 points)

Hello Challengers,

First up this week I continue on in the west wing where I visit the gift shop.

These two are some Grenadier 28mm Liches from the late 80's, rather nice I say.  There was a third lich in the pack that I painted before the challenge for Rangers of Shadow deep.

I got these minis at a sale of old stock, somehow I ended up with two packs, so the other pack I will give to a friend.  there is only so many Liches you need, and the three that come in a pack is superfluous without doubling down on packs.

This is also 2 skulls for the tally.

Next I move back into the centre room, and pick up some points for Local History.  These 6 miniatures are called "the A-team" by Inquisition miniatures.  I think they might be some sort of spoof of the TV show, but cant remember any characters other than BA Baracus.  

These pieces are local history that veteran Australian miniature collectors may recall. Inquisition miniatures appeared in Australia in about 1991 and were heavily distributed in gaming shops locally but not overseas.  Many of the miniatures had uncanny similarities to Citadel miniatures of the time, but they were a bit thinner.  They were around for a few years and disappeared again in the late nineties.  

Now that completes all the shelves apart from the ones in the final room of the library.

Points:

8 x 28mm miniatures = 40 points

2 x library shelves = 40 points

Total = 80 points

Two skulls, bringing the total to Seven.

Kind Regards

Geoff.

From Millsy: Wow, that is some seriously ancient lead Geoff! I remember Inquisition Minis but only vaguely, I think we used some in our D&D games. There's a real charm to these and you have done them credit with your brushwork. It's lovely too see vintage minis given a new lease of life in an age when everything seems disposable. Great work and another 80 points for your tally!

From AlanD - The Start of a New Project (255 points)

Of all the ranges of figures I have ever painted, the Middle Imperial Romans by A&A Miniatures are certainly in my top 5. They aren't everybody's cup of conditum, but painting them gives me great joy.

Back in the 2020 lockdown, I spent many a lonely night painting a third-century Roman army from A&A. Recently, it has been an absolute joy to get it out on the table in several terrific games of To the Strongest! As a result, I have inevitably tinkered with the army, adding the Gripping Beast cataphracts from my last post. Then John from The War Library happened to mention that he had some A&A Romans in stock, which was really like him shooting fish in a barrel. Consequently, I added a unit of armoured archers, which I hadn't quite finished in time for last week's entry. And I may have bought a bunch of other Roman legionaries, cavalry and auxiliaries.

And then, the perfect storm of work anxiety, having lovely A&A Miniatures in my hand and the enjoyment of playing To The Strongest! led to me buying a Palmyran army from A&A. And here we are.

In a sort of homage to the viral days of 2020, I have been quite ill with Covid over the past week. I have been sleeping A LOT, but when I have had the energy, I have made a nice start to the Palmyran army of King Odaenathus. The history and culture of Palmyra is so fascinating. In the decade after the defeat of the Roman emperor Valerian in 260, Palmyra became a major power between Rome and Sassanian Persia, influenced by both but utterly distinct. Ostensibly governing the east on behalf of Rome, King Odaenathus and then his widow Zenobia ended up ruling the region from eastern Turkey through Syria and all the way to Egypt, until Aurelian's 'reconquest?' of Palmyran territory culminated with the destruction of Palmyra in AD273.

For a period in the late 260s Odaenathus commanded Roman troops, so I have started my army with a vexillation of the Legio IIII Scythica and some cavalry. For playing To the Strongest, I've added a hero figure (the clubman) and a casualty marker. I've imagined that the Romans are under the influence of the Palmyrenes, and quite likely largely recruited from them, so have given them (hand painted) shields showing the Palmyrene moon god Aglibol, who is depicted in some surviving reliefs with a crescent and rays. 

In something of a points bomb for me, this week's output comes to 39 foot figures (two of them are prone if you want to halve the points) and 12 cavalry. 

From Millsy: Alan, these are absolutely stunning! If ever the saying "Start as you mean to go on" is applicable this is it. I recall you talking about these shields on a paint and chat and have been keen to see them ever since, and clearly the wait was worth it. Utterly gorgeous mate and worth an extra 10 bonus points for me. More please!

From TomL: DIY & Sarah's cart (70 points)

Leading us to the DIY section is Bernadette, another figure from the Dangerous Dames II set by Bob Murch.

I needed some suitable statues for a horror game I have vague plans for in the future. I had this dream about how I could enhance the final battle by following the library path. This was not the first dream about painting and the path through the library but it was oddly specific. It made sense. I’m sure I am not the only one to dream about making more progress than the given day allows. Anyone?  No?

Moving on, some resin statues, extra bases and  thread bobbins were gathered from various places about the painting table and lead mountain.

A quick dry fit seemed like this would be perfect so I glued everything together. A textured black rustoleum primer did an excellent job hiding years of scratches on the bobbins which were used formerly as painting handles.  Being monstrosities from space and time I figured I needed something different for a paint scheme and turned to my Vallejo Galaxy Dust metallic shifting paint set.  I sprayed several different colors in alternating vertical stripes on the column which in person change beautifully with your viewing angle.  The crouching Cthulhu statues were painted in three of the green based shifters (body, tentacles, wings).  Again a really nice effect in person but rather hard to show in a picture. The reflective paint really messed with my white balance and I had to manually set everything.

The flower dotted ivy crawling down the column, the field of sickly beautiful flowers ringing it and the skulls scattered about them will tie in with other library entries destined for the game. Are they just stone or will they stand as soon as one crosses between them?

A bit of interpretation here for points so please adjust as needed:
1 x 28mm figure * 5 pts = 5 points.
2 x 51mm figures * 9 points  = 18 points. [Millsy - I've scored these as 54mm @ 10pts each]
The columns are 2.9”  by 5" by 3” or about 25% of a cube for 5 points.
Library cart - 20 points.
DIY - 20 points. 

10 warning skulls for the count.

From Millsy: You can never go wrong with anything Lovecraftian Tom, especially when you do something like this with it! I can't decide whether I think the reflective paint which makes them look weirdly wet or oily is better than the colourful basing. Your dame is also superb and I can almost hear her saying "Listen carefully, I will say this only once!" The math for the statues was off so I've corrected it for you, meaning 70 points for your tally!

From KentG: 18mm Napoleonic Wars Saxe-Gotha unbased (pts 69)

 First up this week is the completion of the Westphalian army

with this time, the addition of troops from the Federation of the Rhine 

There aren't a lot of pics this time as I packed up the figures for 

shipping as soon as they were completed. 

I even missed a couple of figures from the photos so of course 

didn't count them in, really happy with the figures but also happy

 to now get back to my 28mm French army again

46 figures in the photo, below are just a few pics with a few variations

of the figures

the three officers are my favorite out of these figures and was 

really happy with how they came out. 

Grenadiers with the red epaulettes and then two of the line infantry 

a few of the voltigeurs these are probably my next favorite,

I was silly enough to not check on the uniform before painting them the first

 time then realizing I had painted them completely wrong and did them again.

these last two pics are of Voltigeurs in great coats

As mentioned a fun paint but I'm glad to get back to 28mm,

that is until the next batch arrives.

                    Points

                    46 x 18mm unbased foot @ 2pts each 92pts - 25% = 69pts

From Millsy: I know you hate painting these mate but you do such a good job with them. You even take the time to highlight the greatcoats and shako covers which is nuts and I love it. Minor German states are a favourite of mine in the period so I particularly enjoyed these. Cracking work!

From StuartL - Writing the Book on Treachery - Literature and Sarah's Library Cart - 145 Points

Hello all,

    As I mentioned in my last post, work has been keeping me very busy recently, so I have had to take a step back from painting and the challenge in general to focus on it. It also hasn't helped that both my monthly RPG game and my wargaming club meetings have fallen on the last two weekends, cutting my hobby time even more. So, I wasn't able to post anything last week as I was too busy marking essays and proof-reading them for my students. Luckily I have a bit of a gap in my schedule this week, so I have been able to push a few things over the line and get them ready for posting.

    My last post saw me taking Sarah's Library Cart over to the Literature section of the library. For this area, I wanted to post about the books I have spent the eighteen years or so reading, the Horus Heresy mega-series of novels by the Black Library (Games Workshop's publishing wing). The series is finally winding down with the release of the final book in the sub-series that wraps up the main storyline. I think in total there are about 90 books, plus loads of novellas and short stories. As you can guess from the title of the series, the main antagonist is Horus. In the books, Horus is the Emperor of Mankind's favourite son, Primarch of the greatest Space Marine Legion and is generally an all round swell guy. By book 2 he decides that he'd rather be evil and destroy everything (the writing at this stage is pretty poor if I'm being honest). The core reason is that he is convinced by a guy named Erebus that if he continues to be the dutiful son, he will eventually be overlooked and forgotten, and wouldn't things be much better if Horus were running the show? (GregB certainly thinks so). Erebus belongs to another Space Marine Legion, the Word Bearers. Originally, the Word Bearers were intended to go out into the galaxy and convince everyone (at gunpoint usually), that there were no gods and that everyone should believe in science, logic and human ingenuity. What they actually did was decide that the Emperor was the ONLY god and proceeded to build temples, shrines and holy buildings everywhere they went, while writing loads of books about how awesome the Emperor was. When the Emperor found out about this, he flattened their biggest temple and told them to cut it out. The Word Bearers then decided that maybe there were better gods to worship and became born-again daemon-worshippers. It was their plan to burn the galaxy to ashes and ruin everything for everyone for all time, they are just that sort of people.

    Anyway, with all that said, here are my entries for the challenge, 20 Despoilers for the Word Bearers Legion. If you're going to play the bad guys, you should play the absolute worst bad guys in the setting in my opinion, and the Word Bearers fit the bill. I can always be happy losing a game, because I know my army probably deserves whatever beating the receive. 

    Despoilers are assault troops, meant to close with the enemy and chop them into little chunks with a variety of very sharp and very nasty swords, axes and spiked clubs. On the whole, the Word Bearers are not the best melee force in Warhammer 30,000, but they are fanatical and favour massed infantry formations. 

    Being devout chaos worshippers, I have made sure to add lots of parts from 40K Chaos Marine kits, to break up the nice neat lines of 30K style armour. Shoulder pads, weapons and this fellow's lovely looking icon all help to give the army a less wholesome aesthetic. They also add a load of skulls to the minis as well. 

    And with that lot out of the way, it is time to head over to the next section, DIY. As has become the norm for me, I will be taking the Library Cart, and so here is my payment.

    This green-haired cyberpunk girl is a 3D print from Unit9 on MyMiniFactory. I have a few more models from this range coming up later today where I will go over how I painted it, so I will skip that detail for now. 

    I have found myself spending more and more time looking at 3D printing. My better half refuses to allow it in the house due to all of the materials involved that can be bad for your health and also because we would quickly need a second house after the current one was filled with 3D printed miniatures in no time at all. Luckily I have a couple of friends I can ask to print stuff out for me as there are a ton of cool models available these days.

On to the scores then.

21 x 28mm minis = 105 points

Literature section = 20 points

Sarah's Library Cart = 20 points

TOTAL = 145 Points.

For my duels.

Skulls (315) + 79 = 394

Legions (620) + 100 = 720

From Millsy: Good to see I'm not the only one painting traitor legions for 40K. If the Emperor wasn't such a complete buzzkill maybe he'd have more loyal servants! I love the deep red you have gone with here Stuart, there's a real richness to it that suits the chapter so well. The green hair on your cyberpunk girl has shades of Tank Girl for me so what's not to like?

It's Friday all day today!

Woot woot! Friday again, thank the paint gods! The Friday Crew have been hard at it once again, cranking the brushes and have produced another stellar collection of painted kit. Is there a cooler and more productive crew? Yeah nah!

This week...

• Kent shares some more gorgeous Napoleonics
• Paul shows off his Romans
• Geoff pulls a leaf from my book and takes care of some loose ends
• Stuart unleashes some Manga and a shed and then indulges in some treachery
• Kerry has some Italian Wars horse on show

Happy Friday peeps!

Cheers,
Millsy

From BruceR: hobby butterfly/squirrel, Union epic (232 points)

Well, the best set plans do not survive first contact with the paint brush.  I've primed my last Zulus (the leader types with headdress etc..) outside in January on the great plains, shocking. We had a game that Saturday and the local gamer group discussed looking to do a project and some love civil war.  Not my jam, but I'll paint, and play if others want to go down a path as a group.  One has old Essex and minifigs, which are smaller 15mm.  The other has two boxes of Warlord epic Gettysburg figs (unpainted).  I foolishly said, "bring a sprue over so I can look at and maybe test paint".  

Here somebody said "squirrel" and my head jerked.  

I started painting these and found them relatively easy to paint using a combination of contrast/speed paint and regular paints.  Going for a mass look so not museum only for table top.  

Primed sprue (and I have to keep saying outside in January) 

I primed light grey, no black undercoat as so small.  I than go through and use GW contrast Ultra Marine (I think, at the office trying to submit so Teemu can look at this at a decent time) for the coat or shirt and kepi,  GW flesh contrast for face and hands.  GW black contrast for hats and belts.  Regular light blue for pants. I than do a little sand, paint, highlight and grass.

I quite like them, and figure I'll do a few more.  We will use 3 stands to a regiment and build brigades from there.   I'm already looking at Kallistra for some addons to the   Warlord items.  It seems cheaper to get such things as wagons and limbers from Kallistra rather than Warlord.  

test strip of 20

the whole sprue

I'll go back to some of the Zulus and Brits before taking on another sprue.  

Points:

104 infantry and artillery crew @ 1    =    104 pts

artillery    @3                                        =      3 pts

mounted     @3                                    =      3 pts

total                                                       =  110 pts.

Stay well and keep painting.  

Bruce

TeemuL: I guess those are Warlord Games Epic ACW troops and thus their size is 18mm, and it is two points per infantry, four for cavalry or guns. So you get quite a lot points more than you asked for, if I'm correct. If, however, they are 10mm, then you have done excellent job on painting those little men. And brushwork is excellent even on the 18mm scale, no worries. They really like the Union I imagine Union looks like - not really my piece of history, but I know there were blues vs greys, and yours look very good blues. Simple basing makes them pop up even more, I hope they won't catch all the bullets in the first game.

From SteveA: 28mm Fantasy Wizard with Warband henchmen for Frostgrave [Fantasy] (80points)

This year I am aiming to paint up minis for games I am playing or am aiming to play.  Among the minis and games in my To Do pile is Frostgrave.    This here is about half of the minis I want to eventually paint up for options to build and grow my first Frostgrave Warband. 

I have fully embraced the notion that official Frostgrave miniatures are not required.  Thus the Wizard to lead my Warband is a recent 3d print found on Thingiverse and for the rest of  I dug deep into the pile of unpainted minis I assembled many years ago from the old GW Mordheim and Fantasy Battle kits.

Also for this year, I wanted to venture into painting some minis and terrain for  playing games in cold settings, as I never tried painting anything wintery before.  To make these mini bases frosty for Frostgrave, I painted white the classic basing mix of glue and sand.  Based upon a tip I learned when watching the mini painting hobby folks on the yootoobs, I also washed the white sandy  bases in an approximately  1-4 ratio of azure blue paint mixed with water to help imbue the white snow with an impression of  icy cold.   Then to break up the blue hue I also dabbed on a few spots of snow flock  that I picked up as an impulse buy from my local hobby shop. 

Since most of these pointy weapon wielders could find a home in games played within rather mundane world settings, I'll leverage the old grey beardy guy wearing a tall blue pointy hat who is holding a zippity-zappity staff to pull a challenging book from the Fantasy section of the AHPC library.

28mm figures 

 5 pts - Wizard(Foot Figure)        
20 pts - Thugs with Clubs (Foot Figure) [4x5pts]
25 pts -  Man At Arms with Sword and buckler (Foot Figure) [5x5pts]
 5pts -   Templar with Halberd (Foot Figure) 
 5pts -  Infantryman with 2h Sword (Foot Figure)
20 pts - Challenge Library = "Fantasy"
Total 80 points

TeemuL: Good looking group for Frostgrave, a game I'd been planning to try for couple of years, but not yet - there seems to be a constant stream of nice skirmish games and before I can get into one, the next one is on the door and the old ones are forgotten. Partial reason might be that my small gaming group has been very busy lately with lots of other things than gaming, so the gaming has gone down in general. But enough of me, back to the wizard and his companions.The bright blue works great on him, adding the coldness of the Frostgrave environment. The snow covered bases do their work, too. 80 points for you.